Another hard day's work... and all those bills.

I think the cats were a touch freaked out by the continuous thunder storms last night - we went to sleep with BOTH of them on the bed with us. Fortunately, it was cool enough not to matter, and we both had a great night's sleep - in fact, we all did. Florence didn't move from between my legs until around half past twelve, and at one point Helen had to check that Lucca was still breathing, he was so motionless - she even lifted his leg and dropped it without response.

On today's agenda was for Helen to dive headlong into the conference papers (...AGAIN) while I was off to Lanciole ...AGAIN, to do some strimming ...AGAIN! After our respective days of 'enjoyment', we were due to attend an appointment with Andrea, our geometra, at 18:45 to go through all of the bills we'd received, and we had then been meant to be going for a get-together with Sue and Chris in Pescia at 20:00, but Sue called last night to postpone as something had cropped up.

So, while Helen went to work in the cave this morning, I headed back up the valley on my now familiar drive. I knew there was the remainder of the strimming to do today, meaning I would have strimmed the entire place by myself - quite an achievement. If you'd asked me to do it a week or so earlier, I'd have less than relished to prospect, but now it seems well within my capabilities.

By the time lunch rolled around, I had completed the aforementioned task, and not only that, but re-strimmed the driveway, as it had grown so much since last week.

I had no idea what was in store for me after lunch, and secretly I was hoping for a half day, so that I could get home to do some our own 'gardening', but the money is useful, so I wasn't too disappointed when I was asked to weed a bank before the gardening guys planted some roses in it.

I now realise that my faithful, if smelly (from the rubber palms) gloves are not up to the task of gardening. At least not here: twice I enthusiastically grabbed a fistful of weeds and felt a large thorn plunge into one of my pinkies. My thumb and forefinger are still throbbing now. I also nearly grabbed a scorpion, but managed to withdraw from that before it was too late and continued to weed with slightly less gusto and more care for my safety.

Weeding done, I then swept down the large patio and swimming pool, and collected and disposed of some prunings. The place is looking very presentable now. All the time I was busy with my strimming, weeding and sweeping, Gary was sitting down painting the dwarf wall (by the end of the day, eight 7.5 litre tins of paint will have been used on this 18-inch wall).

It was a day of changeable weather - one minute like this, with deep blue skies and sunshine...

... A short while later like this, with claps of thunder and heavy, heavy rain.

Next, I collected a large pile of stones from around the place to temporarily support the posts of a small fence that the gardening guys had managed to knock over, and then re-strimmed the path and steps from the upper parking area down to the house. That took me to around half past four, so with another hour and a half left, there was nothing else for it but to pick up a paintbrush and help with painting the wall. What a soul-destroying job that is - I thought I had it bad with the strimming, but I soon realised I'd done OK out of the deal: the wall texture is so rough, and the paint so thick, that the only way to paint it is to stipple the entire thing, normal brush strokes get you nowhere.

Just one small section of the dratted wall.

When the clock struck 6pm, I think I was in the car before my paintbrush even hit the floor (well, a slight exaggeration, but I'd well and truly had enough of that, so I left Gary painting until it got dark or the paint ran out - whichever happened first).

I dashed home to pick Helen up so that we could head to Andrea's office in Pescia. We had a small wait as someone was still with him when we arrived (five minutes late). That was a relief, as I thought we'd delayed his departure for home by 45 mins as it was, as he has originally requested a 6pm meeting.

This was the first time we had been to see Andrea without our comfort blanket (Richard), and I think we were both a touch nervous as we had a lot of bills to work through and were unsure as to how much we would be able to understand without a translator. However, our fears proved to be unfounded: Andrea spoke nice and slowly for us, with the occasional smattering of English, and we reciprocated with our best Italian. We were pleased that we had understood pretty much everything he'd said, and all in all we had an enjoyable 45 minutes and left feeling buoyed by the whole affair.

In case you're wondering, it seems we've come almost to the end of the bill-paying saga, but now we need to retrieve the money for all the bills we've paid directly from the previous owners... 

Anyway, we decided to head to Bar Poulter to have a beer and talk over what had just happened. It's been all too easy to lose sight of what we're doing here lately, being so mired in everything, but the hour at the bar was again a great reminder - sitting chatting watching the world (mondo) go by in our medieval square was amazing. Simple pleasures!

So after a brief interlude of self indulgence, we went home to cook dinner and hopefully - time and weather permitting - finally watch some Tour de France. We haven't managed to see any coverage since Stage 2 yet because the weather keeps thwarting our attempts (at the first rumble of thunder our sensitive internet seems to drop out). Everyone over here seems to be talking about the (very unseasonal) weather (hmm just like England?!). Apparently it's very rare to have any rain at all in July, never mind the several days in a row of torrential storms that we've been having this week. It was even cool enough this evening for Helen to wear a coat while we sat in the square with our beer (don't understand it myself, I thought it was a lovely temperature).

So there we are - almost at the end of another week! We're in two minds about that - on the one hand thankful that it's Friday tomorrow and nearly the weekend, but on the other hand worried by how quickly the days are passing with still so much to do!!